Trump Doctrine--Bad For Americans?

Seattle police apply the Trump doctrine

Posted on March 7, 2018 by Jay Baker

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During his gab-fest with lawmakers and gun rights stakeholders last week, President Donald Trump suggested a good gun policy would be taking guns from people and letting courts decide later whether the confiscation was lawful.

His exact quote, referencing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooter, was:

The police saw that he was a problem, they didn’t take any guns away. Now, that could’ve been policing. They should’ve taken them away anyway, whether they had the right or not… I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time. Take the guns first, go through due process second.

As Bob Livingston reminded us regarding Trump’s comments, such a thing is a blatant violation of Americans’ rights guaranteed under the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments. Trump received no backlash from the attendees at the meeting, and he’s gotten little backlash from the mainstream media – which demonstrates they agree wholeheartedly.

Apparently, so does the Seattle Police Department, which recently used a new state law to forcibly confiscate a weapon from a man who had broken no law.

According to media reports, the incident occurred in the Belltown community after neighbors complained the man “had been intimidating people for the past year.” That intimidation involved wearing a .25 caliber automatic on his side while walking down the hall of his apartment complex and staring at customers through a plate glass window while wearing his firearm.

Open carry is legal in Washington, and no one accused the man – who police have not identified – of brandishing the weapon or threatening anyone. Yet based on complaints, police used the “extreme risk protection order” law (ERPO) to force the man to surrender his firearm.

ERPOs have been used by Washington police departments “a few dozen” times to convince people to voluntarily give up their weapons, according to reports. But Seattle is the first department to serve an ERPO warrant and forcibly confiscate a gun, according to media reports.

During a meeting with governors, Washington Governor Jay Inslee told Trump that Washington’s ERPO law should be a model for the rest of the nation.

Millions of people who once lived in communist Russia and China and Nazi Germany were unavailable for comment.

This Is A Leader--Something We Never Saw From Obama

Trump in Poland: West’s Will to Survive is ‘Fundamental Question of our Time’

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REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

by KEN KLUKOWSKI6 Jul 2017Washington, DC4,123

President Donald Trump in Poland on Thursday declared the paramount importance of defending our values, protecting our borders, building strong families, and preserving Western civilization. It was a speech that could have been given by President Ronald Reagan, reminiscent of Reagan’s historic “Tear Down This Wall” speech.

Addressing cheering throngs in the capital city of Warsaw, President Trump gave a serious speech about the serious threats facing the West as a whole: the United States, Poland, and more broadly the dozens of nations in Europe and North and South America that share a democratic form of government and typically hold to a Judeo-Christian moral philosophy.

His 35-minute speech covered a broad range of issues, praising Poland for its many accomplishments, pledging U.S. support for its ongoing endeavors, and thanking Poland for being one of the few NATO members that makes its full financial contributions to the alliance.

But then President Trump took a deeply philosophical turn, surveying the dangers to peace and stability facing not just the United States and Poland but scores of other nations across the globe.

“The fundamental question of our time is: whether the West has the will to survive,” he declared poignantly.

“Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost?,” the president continued. “Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

President Trump then cited the family unit and the values instilled in those family homes as the key for Western civilization: “We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak, and we will not survive.”

It is possible that the president is setting forth the elements of the Trump Doctrine in foreign policy, one predicated upon American exceptionalism. Specifically, one that embraces that America’s greatness comes from America’s goodness—a goodness primarily derived from faith and family.

Far from isolationist, the Trump Doctrine seems to include that America can play a leading role in the world without subordinating the safety, prosperity, or happiness of American citizens to those of other countries.

Shortly after the speech, White House aide Sebastian Gorka appeared on Fox News, sounding a similar theme of how American exceptionalism can coexist with international engagement.

“President Trump is president of this country, not president of the world,” Gorka began. But then he explained that the president’s agenda does not require withdrawing inside our own borders.

“‘America First’ does not mean ‘America Alone,’” Gorka declared.

Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.